Did you know? SQL Server 2008 includes Data Profiling Task

The Data Profiling task is a new task in the Integration Services toolbox. You can use this task inside an Integration Services package to profile data that is stored in SQL Server. The information provided by the profile helps you identify potential problems with data quality.

The Data Profiling task provides profiles that help identify data quality problems within individual columns and with column relationships:

Profiles that help identify problems within individual columns

· The distribution of lengths in the column values.

· The percentage of null values.

· The distribution of values in the column.

· Column statistics for numeric columns.

· Regular expressions that match string columns.

Profiles that help identify problems with column relationships

· Candidate key columns.

· Functional dependencies between columns.

· The inclusion of the set of values in one column in the set of values in another column.